When I could no longer right myself once fallen I knew I was too tired to continue. It was my first attempt at cross-country skiing, and by this time in the afternoon every muscle was twitching. It was a good twitch, but twitching nonetheless. I had only fallen a few times -- not once, actually, until I left the flat figure-eights in the field where the neophytes learn. Throughout those circles I managed to stay upright, and then I got ambitious. It could be that I got "cocky," but I prefer to think "ambitious." After all, you can't live all your life picking low hanging fruit. As lovely as was the field, I longed for the beauty of the upper trails.
Of course, there is the hill that must be mounted just to reach those trails. And there are those myriad slopes of varying degrees once in that elevation. But even then, for the most part, I managed to stay vertical. For the most part. Thankfully, the fourteen layers of clothing I was wearing kept me warm and surprisingly dry. And blessedly, skiing is populated by people of grace who were ever nearby and ready to help, ready to offer a tip about poles and arms and how best to get back up, ready to check and see if anything was broken. "Only my pride," I routinely responded. But even that was mere sociability. The truth is I hadn't mounted the mount with any pride to break. I could only exceed my expectations, and for the most part ended the day pleasantly surprised. And along the way, when I remembered to quit watching the tips of my skiis and started seeing where I was -- on a snowy hillside in Southern Vermont with trees all around me and trickling brooks beside me and the bright sky above me -- the falls, the hesitations, the calculations, and the incessant twitching seemed completely worthwhile.
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